Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

was the public hearth, and his name appeared at the head of official lists."-J. B. Bury, History of Greece, p. 171.

ARCIS-SUR-AUBE, Battle of. See FRANCE:. 1814 (January-March).

ARCOLA, Battle of (1796). See FRANCE: 17961797 (October-April).

ARCOT, the principal city in the district of North Arcot near Madras, British India. The eity played a prominent part in the conquest of India. In the middle of the eighteenth century the British and the French supported rival claimants to the throne of the Carnatic. It was during the ensuing war that the famous episode of Clive's capture and defense of Arcot occurred, when with but a handful of native and white troops the British general forced the far superior forces of the enemy to abandon the city without a struggle. See also INDIA: 1743-1752.

ARCTIC EXPLORATION: 1527-1773.-John Davis rounds the southern end of Greenland.Hudson's record.-Dutch in the Arctic circle. -Phipp's farthest north.-"The struggle for the North Pole began nearly one hundred years before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock, being inaugurated (1527) by that king of many distinctions, Henry VIII of England. In 1588 John Davis rounded Cape Farewell, the southern end of Greenland, and followed the coast for eight hundred miles to Sanderson Hope. He discovered the strait which bears his name, and gained for Great Britain what was then the record for the farthest north, 72° 12', a point 1128 miles from the geographical North Pole. Scores of hardy navigators, British, French, Dutch, German, Scandinavian, and Russian, followed Davis, all seeking to hew across the Pole the muchcoveted short route to China and the Indies. The rivalry was keen and costly in lives, ships, and treasure, but from the time of Henry VIII for three and one-half centuries, or until 1882 (with the exception of 1594-1606, when, through Wm. Barents, the Dutch held the record), Great Britain's flag was always waving nearest the top of the globe. The same year that Jamestown was founded, Henry Hudson (1607), also seeking the route to the Indies, discovered Jan Mayen, circumnavigated Spitzbergen, and advanced the eye of man to 80° 23'. Most valuable of all, Hudson brought back accounts of great multitudes of whales and walruses, with the result that for the succeeding years these new waters were thronged with fleets of whaling ships from every maritime nation. The Dutch specially profited by Hudson's discovery. During the 17th and 18th centuries they sent no less than 300 ships and 15,000 men each summer to these arctic fisheries and established on Spitzbergen, within the Arctic Circle, one of the most remarkable summer towns the world has ever known, where stores and warehouses and reducing stations and cooperages and many kindred industries flourished during the fishing season. With the approach of winter all buildings were shut up and the population, numbering several thousand, all returned home. Hudson's record remained unequaled for 165 years, or until 1773, when J. C. Phipps surpassed his farthest north by twenty-five miles."-G. H. Grosvenor, in Foreword to Robert E. Peary's North Pole, pp. xv-xvi.

1819-1848.-Parry's explorations beyond the magnetic north pole.-His plan to dash to the pole on foot.-Discoveries of Ross.-Sir John Franklin's tragic expedition.-"The first half of the 19th century witnessed many brave ships and gallant men sent to the arctic regions. While

most of these expeditions were not directed against the Pole so much as sent in an endeavor to find a route to the Indies round North Americathe Northwest Passage-and around Asia-the Northeast Passage-many of them are intimately interwoven with the conquest of the Pole, and were a necessary part of its ultimate discovery. England hurled expedition after expedition, manned by the best talent and energy of her navy, against the ice which seemingly blocked every channel to her ambitions for an arctic route to the Orient. In 1819 Parry penetrated many intricate passages and overcame one-half of the distance between Greenland and Bering Sea, winning a prize of £5000, offered by Parliament to the first navigator to pass the 110th meridian west of Greenwich. He was also the first navigator to pass directly north of the magnetic North Pole, which he located approximately, and thus the first to report the strange experience of seeing the compass needle pointing due south. So great was Parry's success that the British government sent him out in command of two other expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage. In explorations and discoveries the results of these two later expeditions were not so rich, but the experience in ice work so obtained gave Parry conclusions which revolutionized all methods in arctic navigation. Hitherto all attempts to approach the Pole had been in ships. In 1827 Parry suggested the plan of a dash to the Pole on foot, from a base on land. He obtained the assistance of the government, which for the fourth time sent him to the Arctic provided with well-equipped ships and able officers and men. He carried a number of reindeer with him to his base in Spitzbergen, purposing to use these animals to drag his sledges. The scheme proved impracticable, however, and he was compelled to depend on the muscles of his men to haul his two heavy sledges, which were in reality boats on steel runners. Leaving Spitzbergen on June 23 with twenty-eight men, he pushed northward. But the summer sun had broken up the ice floes, and the party repeatedly found it necessary to take the runners off their boats in order to ferry across the stretches of open water. After thirty days' incessant toil Parry had reached 82° 45', about 150 miles north of his base and 435 geographical miles from the Pole. Here he found that, while his party rested, the drift of the ice was carrying him daily back, almost as much as they were able to make in the day's work. Retreat was therefore begun. Parry's accomplishments, marking a new era in polar explorations, created a tremendous sensation. Knighthood was immediately bestowed upon him by the King, while the British people heaped upon him all the honors and applause with which they have invariably crowned every explorer returning from the north with even a measure of success. In originality of plan and equipment Parry has been equaled and surpassed only by Nansen and Peary. In those early days, few men being rich enough to pay for expeditions to the north out of their own pockets, practically every explorer was financed by the government under whose orders he acted. In 1829, however, Felix Booth, sheriff of London, gave Captain John Ross, an English naval officer, who had achieved only moderate success in a previous expedition, a small paddle-wheel steamer, the Victory, and entered him in the race for the Northwest Passage. Ross was assisted, as mate, by his nephew, James Clark Ross, who was young and energetic, and who was later to win laurels at the opposite end of the globe. This first attempt to use steam for ice

navigation failed, owing to a poor engine or incompetent engineers, but in all other respects the Rosses achieved gloriously. During their five years' absence, 1829-1834, they made important discoveries around Boothia Felix, but most valuable was their definite location of the magnetic North Pole and the remarkable series of magnetic and meteorological observations which they brought back with them. No band of men ever set out for the unknown with brighter hopes or more just anticipation of success than Sir John Franklin's expedition of 1845. The frightful tragedy which overwhelmed them, together with the mystery of their disappearance, which baffled the world for years and is not yet entirely explained, forms the most terrible narrative in arctic history. Franklin had been knighted in 1827, at the same time as Parry, for the valuable and very extensive explorations which he had conducted by snowshoes and canoe on the North American coast between the Coppermine and Great Fish rivers, during the same years that Parry had been gaining fame in the north. In the interval Franklin had served as Governor of Tasmania for seven years. His splendid reputation and ability as an organizer made him, though now fifty-nine years of age, the unanimous choice of the government for the most elaborate arctic expedition it had prepared in many years. Franklin's fame and experience, and that of Crozier and his other lieutenants, who had seen much service in the north, his able ships, the Terror and the Erebus, which had just returned from a voyage of unusual success to the Antarctic, and his magnificent equipment, aroused the enthusiasm of the British to the highest pitch and justified them in their hopes for bringing the wearying struggle for the Northwest Passage to an immediate conclusion. For more than a year everything prospered with the party. By September, 1846, Franklin had navigated the vessels almost within sight of the coast which he had explored twenty years previously, and beyond which the route to Bering Sea was well known. The prize was nearly won when the ships became imprisoned by the ice for the winter, a few miles north of King William Land. The following June Franklin died; the ice continued impenetrable, and did not loosen its grip all that year. In July, 1848, Crozier, who had succeeded to the command, was compelled to abandon the ships, and, with the 105 survivors who were all enfeebled by the three successive winters in the Arctic, started on foot for Back River. How far they got we shall probably never know. Meanwhile, when Franklin failed to return in 1848-he was provisioned for only three years-England became alarmed and despatched relief expeditions by sea from the Bering Sea and the Atlantic and by land north from Canada, but all efforts failed to gather news of Franklin till 1854, when Rae fell in with some Eskimo hunters near King William Land, who told him of two ships that were beset some years previous, and of the death of all the party from starvation. In 1857 Lady Franklin, not content with this bare and indirect report of her husband's fate, sacrificed a fortune to equip a searching party to be commanded by Leopold McClintock, one of the ablest and toughest travelers over the ice the world has ever known. In 1859 McClintock verified the Eskimos' sad story by the discovery on King William Land of a record dated April, 1848, which told of Franklin's death and of the abandonment of the ships also found among the Eskimos, silver plate and other relics of the party; elsewhere he saw one of Franklin's boats on a sledge, with two skeletons

He

inside and clothing and chocolate; in another place he found tents and flags; and elsewhere he made the yet more ghastly discovery of a bleached human skeleton prone on its face, as though attesting the truthfulness of an Eskimo woman who, claiming to have seen forty of the survivors late. in 1848, said 'they fell down and died as they walked.''-Ibid., pp. xvi-xxi.

1850-1883.-Northwest passage accomplished by Robert McClure.-Kane's achievements.Charles Francis Hall and the voyage of the Polaris. British explorations in 1875 and 1876. -English record broken by Greely.-"The distinction of being the first to make the Northwest Passage, which Franklin so narrowly missed, fell to Robert McClure (1850-53) and Richard Collinson (1850-55), who commanded the two ships sent north through Bering Strait to search for Franklin, McClure accomplished the passage on foot after losing his ship in the ice in Barrow Strait, but Collinson brought his vessel safely through to England. The Northwest Passage was not again made until Roald Amundsen navigated the tiny Gjoa, a sailing sloop with gasoline engine, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 1903-06. Yankee whalers each year had been venturing further north in Davis Strait and Baffin Bay and Bering Sea, but America had taken no active part in polar exploration until the sympathy aroused by the tragic disappearance of Franklin induced Henry Grinnell and George Peabody to send out the Advance in charge of Elisha Kent Kane to search for Franklin north of Smith Sound. In spite of inexperience, which resulted in scurvy, fatal accidents, privations, and the loss of his ship, Kane's achievements (1853-55) were very brilliant. He discovered and entered Kane Basin, which forms the beginning of the passage of the polar ocean, explored both shores of the new sea, and outlined what has since been called the American route to the Pole. Sixteen years later (1871) another American, Charles Francis Hall, who had gained much arctic experience by a successful search for additional traces and relics of Franklin (1862-69), sailed the Polaris through Kane Basin and Kennedy Channel, also through Hall Basin and Robeson Channel, which he discovered, into the polar ocean itself, thus completing the exploration of the outlet which Kane had begun. He took his vessel to the then unprecedented (for a ship) latitude of 82° 11'. But Hall's explorations, begun so auspiciously, were suddenly terminated by his tragic death in November from over-exertion caused by a long sledge journey. When the ice began to move the ensuing year, his party sought to return, but the Polaris was caught in the deadly grip of an impassable ice pack. After two months of drifting, part of the crew, with some Eskimo men and women, alarmed by the groaning and crashing of the ice during a furious autumn storm, camped on an ice floe which shortly afterwards separated from the ship. For five months. December to April, they lived on this cold and desolate raft, which carried them safely 1,300 miles to Labrador, where they were picked up by the Tigress. During the winter one of the Eskimo women presented the party with a baby, so that their number had increased during the arduous experience. Meanwhile the Polaris had been beached on the Greenland shore, and those remaining on the ship were eventually also rescued In 1875 Great Britain began an elaborate attack on the Pole viâ what was now known as the American route, two ships most lavishly equipped being despatched under command of George Nares He succeeded in navigating the Alert fourteen

miles further north than the Polaris had penetrated four years previous. Before the winter set in, Aldrich on land reached 82° 48', which was three miles nearer the Pole than Parry's mark made forty-eight years before, and the following spring Markham gained 83° 20' on the polar ocean. Other parties explored several hundred miles of coast line. But Nares was unable to cope with the scurvy, which disabled thirty-six of his men, or with the severe frosts, which cost the life of one man and seriously injured others. The next expedition to this region was that sent out under the auspices of the United States government and commanded by Lieutenant A. W. Greely, U. S. A., to establish at Lady Franklin Bay the American circumpolar station (1881). Greely during the two years at Fort Conger carried on extensive explorations of Ellesmere Land and the Greenland coast, and by the assistance of his two lieutenants, Lockwood and Brainard, wrested from Great Britain the record which she had held for 300 years. Greely's mark was 83° 24', which bettered the British by four miles. As the relief ship, promised for 1883, failed to reach him or to land supplies at the prearranged point south of Fort Conger, the winter of 1883-84 was passed in great misery and horror. When help finally came to the camp at Cape Sabine, seven men only were alive."Ibid., pp. xxii-xxiv.

1867-1901.-Explorations in the polar area north of Siberia.-De Long's expedition.-Nansen and the Fram.-Explorations along the arctic coasts of Europe, Siberia and Greenland.— "While these important events were occurring in the vicinity of Greenland, interesting developments were also taking place in that half of the polar area north of Siberia. When in 1867 an American whaler, Thomas Long, reported new land, Wrangell Land, about 500 miles northwest of Bering Strait, many hailed the discovery as that of the edge of a supposed continent extending from Asia across the Pole to Greenland, for the natives around Bering Strait had long excited explorers by their traditions of an icebound big land beyond the horizon. Such extravagant claims were made for the new land that Commander De Long, U. S. N., determined to explore it and use it as a base for gaining the Pole. But his ship, the Jeannette, was caught in the ice (September, 1879) and carried right through the place where the new continent was supposed to be. For nearly two years De Long's party remained helpless prisoners until in June, 1881, the ship was crushed and sank, forcing the men to take refuge on the ice floes in mid ocean, 150 miles from the New Siberian Islands. They saved several boats and sledges and a small supply of provisions and water. After incredible hardships and suffering, G. W. Melville, the chief engineer, who was in charge of one of the boats, with nine men, reached, on September 26, a Russian village on the Lena. All the others perished, some being lost at sea, by the foundering of the boats, while others, including De Long, had starved to death after reaching the desolate Siberian coast. Three years later some Eskimos found washed ashore on the southeast coast of Greenland several broken biscuit boxes and lists of stores, which are said to be in De Long's handwriting. The startling circumstance that these relics in their long drift from where the ship sank had necessarily passed across or very near to the Pole aroused great speculation as to the probable currents in the polar area. Nansen, who had already made the first crossing of Greenland's ice cap, argued that the same current which had guided the relics

on their long journey would similarly conduct_a ship. He therefore constructed a unique craft, the Fram, so designed that when hugged by the ice pack she would not be crushed, but would be lifted up and rest on the ice; he provisioned the vessel for five years and allowed her to be frozen in the ice near where the Jeannette had sunk, 78° 50′ N., 134° E. (September 25, 1893). When at the end of eighteen months the ship had approached 314 miles nearer to the Pole, Nansen and one companion, Johansen, with kayaks, dogs, sledges, and three months' provisions, deliberately left the ship and plunged northward toward the Pole, March 14, 1895. In twenty-three days the two men had overcome one-third of the distance to the Pole, reaching 86° 12'. To continue onward would have meant certain death, so they turned back. When their watches ran down Providence guided them, and the marvelous physique of both sustained them through fog and storm and threatened starvation until they reached Franz Josef Land, late in August. There they built a hut of stones and killed bears for meat for the winter. In May, 1896, they resumed their southward journey, when fortunately they met the Englishman Jackson, who was exploring the Archipelago. Meanwhile the Fram, after Nansen left her, continued her tortuous drifting across the upper world. Once she approached as near as 85° 57' to the Pole-only fifteen miles less than Nansen's farthest. At last, in August, 1896, with the help of dynamite, she was freed from the grip of the ice and hurried home, arriving in time to participate in the welcome of Nansen, who had landed a few days earlier. Franz Josef Land, where Nansen was rescued by Jackson, has served as the base of many dashes for the Pole. It was from its northernmost point that the illustrious young member of the royal family of Italy, the Duke of the Abruzzi, launched the party captained by Cagni that won from Nansen for the Latin race the honor of the farthest north, 86° 34', in 1901. This land, which consists of numerous islands, had been named after the Emperor of Austria-Hungary by Weyprecht and Payer, leaders of the Austrian-Hungarian polar expedition of 1872-74, who discovered and first explored the Archipelago. It was from Spitzbergen that Andrée, with two companions, sailed his balloon toward the Pole, in July, 1897, never to be heard from again, except for three message buoys dropped in the sea a few miles from the starting-point. The Northeast Passage was first achieved in 1878-1879 by Adolph Erik Nordenskjold. Step by step energetic explorers, principally Russian, had been mapping the arctic coasts of Europe and Siberia until practically all the headlands and islands were well defined. Nordenskjold, whose name was already renowned for important researches in Greenland, Nova Zembla, and northern Asia, in less than two months guided the steam whaler Vega from Tromsoe, Norway, to the most easterly peninsula of Asia. But when barely more than 100 miles from Bering Strait, intervening ice blocked his hopes of passing from the Atlantic to the Pacific in a single season and held him fast for ten months. . . . The preceding brief summary gives only an inadequate conception of the immense treasures of money and lives expended by the nations to explore the northern ice world and to attain the apex of the earth. All efforts to reach the Pole had failed, notwithstanding the unlimited sacrifice of gold and energy and blood which had been poured out without stint for nearly four centuries. But the sacrifice had not been without compensation. Those who had ventured their lives in the contest h

not been actuated solely by the ambition to win a race to breast the tape first-but to contribute, in Sir John Franklin's words, 'to the extension of the bounds of science.' The scores of expeditions, in addition to new geographical discoveries, had brought back a wealth of information about the animals and vegetable life, the winds and currents, deep sea temperatures, soundings, the magnetism of the earth, fossils and rock specimens, tidal data, etc., which have enriched many branches of science and greatly increased the sum of human knowledge."—Ibid., pp. xxiv-xxviii. 1886-1909.-Peary's three expeditions

in search of the Pole.-Controversy between Peary and Cook.-Peary recognized as the discoverer of the Pole.-His account.-"A brief summer excursion to Greenland in 1886 aroused Robert E. Peary, a civil engineer in the United States navy, to an interest in the polar problem. . . . He realized at once that the goal which had eluded so many hundreds of ambitious and dauntless men could be won only by a new method of attack. The first arctic problem with which Peary grappled was considered at that time in importance second only to the conquest of the Pole; namely, to determine the insularity of Greenland and the extent of its projection northward. At the very

beginning of his first expedition to Greenland, in 1891, he suffered an accident which sorely taxed his patience as well as his body. . . . As his ship, the Kite, was working its way through the ice fields off the Greenland shore, a cake of ice became wedged in the rudder, causing the wheel to reverse. One of the spokes jammed Peary's leg against the casement, making it impossible to extricate himself until both bones of the leg were broken. The party urged him to return to the United States for the winter and to resume his exploration the following year. But Peary insisted on being landed as originally planned at McCormick Bay, stating that the money of his friends had been invested in the project and that he must 'make good' to them. The assiduous nursing of Mrs. Peary, aided by the bracing air, so speedily restored his strength that at the ensuing Christmas festivities which he arranged for the Eskimos, he outraced on snowshoes all the natives and his own men! In the following May, with one companion, Astrup, he ascended to the summit of the great ice cap which covers the interior of Greenland, 5,000 to 8,000 feet in elevation, and pushed northward for 500 miles over a region where the foot of man had never trod before, in temperatures ranging from 10° to 50° below zero, to Independence Bay, which he discovered and named, July 4, 1892. Imagine his surprise on descending from the tableland to enter a little valley radiant with gorgeous flowers and alive with murmuring bees, where musk oxen were lazily browsing. This sledding journey, which he duplicated by another equally remarkable crossing of the ice cap three years later, defined the northern extension of Greenland and conclusively proved that it is an island instead of a continent extending to the Pole. In boldness of conception and brilliancy of results these two crossings of Greenland are unsurpassed in arctic history. The magnitude of Peary's feat is better appreciated when it is recalled that Nansen's historic crossing of the island was below the Arctic Circle, 1,000 miles south of Peary's latitude, where Greenland is some 250 miles wide. Peary now turned his attention to the Pole, which lay 306 geographical miles farther north than any man had penetrated on the western hemisphere. To get there by the American route he must break a virgin trail every mile

north from Greely's 83° 24'. No one had pio neered so great a distance northward. Markham and others had attained enduring fame by advancing the Flag considerably less than 100 miles, Parry had pioneered 150 miles, and Nansen 128 from his ship. His experiences in Greenland had convinced Peary, if possible more firmly than before, that the only way of surmounting this last and most formidable barrier was to adopt the manner of life, the food, the snowhouses, and the clothing of the Eskimos, who by centuries of experience had learned the most effective method of combating the rigors of arctic weather; to utilize the game of the northland, the arctic reindeer, musk ox, etc., which his explorations had proved comparatively abundant, thus with fresh meat keeping his men fit and good-tempered through the depressing winter night; and lastly to train the Eskimo to become his sledging crew. In his first North Pole expedition, which lasted for four years, 1898-1902, Peary failed to get nearer than 343 miles to the Pole. Each successive year dense packs of ice blocked the passage to the polar ocean, compelling him to make his base approximately 700 miles from the Pole, or 200 miles south of the headquarters of Nares, too great a distance from the Pole to be overcome in one short season. During this trying period. by sledging feats which in distance and physical obstacles overcome exceeded the extraordinary records made in Greenland, he explored and mapped hundreds of miles of coast line of Greenland and of the islands west and north of Greenland. On the next attempt, Peary insured reaching the polar ocean by designing and constructing the Roosevelt, whose resistless frame crushed its way to the desired haven on the shores of the polar sea. From here he made that wonderful march of 1906 to 87° 6' a new world's record. Winds of unusual fury, by opening big leads, robbed him of the Pole, and nearly of his life."-Ibid., pp. xxix-xxxi..

ALSO IN: F. Nansen, In the mists: Arctic exploration in early times.

Once more, in July, 1908, Commander Peary set his face Arcticward, on the staunch Roosevelt, with two scientific companions, and equipped himself at Etah with Eskimos and dogs for another journey across the ice-fields, from some point on the Grant Land coast. On Sept. 1, 1909, the whole world was startled and excited by a message, flashed first to Lerwick, in the Shetland islands, from a passing Danish steamer, the Hans Egede, and thence to all corners of the earth, saying: "We have on board the American traveller, Dr. Cook, who reached the North Pole April 21, 1908. [Dr. Frederick A. Cook was the physician on Peary's expedition (1891-1802) and the Belgian expedition (1897-1809) and had left for the Pole in 1007.] Dr. Cook arrived at Upernivik (the northernmost Danish settlement in Greenland, on an island og the west coast) in May of 1000 from Cape York (in the northwest part of Greenland, on Baffin Bay). The Eskimos of Cape York confirm Dr. Cook's story of his journey." The next day brought a cabled announcement from Dr. Cook himself, to the New York Her ald, briefly telling of his triumph, "after a prolonged fight against famine and frost," and describing the emotions with which he had found himself at the goal which so many had striven vainly to attain. "What a cheerless spot," be moralized, "to have aroused the ambition of man for so many ages An endless field of purple snows. No life. No land. No spot to relieve the monotony of frost. We were the

« AnteriorContinuar »